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What's gonna happen to software engineers?

yakko.dev

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Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#81

Post by artyom »

apsurd wrote: post #13
artyom wrote: post #2

Once upon a time there were engineers that used software. Just like any other tool, and usually in combination with electronic, electrical and mechanical equipment, all of them being very well aware of the laws governing it all. But it was so great as a tool that some engineers didn't want to deal with the burdens and limitations of the physical world, and started focusing on software more and more. Then the software…

As someone not old but young enough to not have experienced a world before software, Im not sure that engineering rooted in the physical is a necessary prerequisite. I appreciate your comment but the entire world I happened to experience in my coming of age was at the dawn of the consumer internet. And so “web stuff” was how I cut my teeth. And its my profession. And i never went to school for it, im basically a dumb…

> All to say I just dont think CS principles down to the physics level is the root and all is an abstraction.

Not my point either. I was just referring to the tooling changing over time, with the discipline constantly evolving forward nonetheless.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#82

Post by ai_fry_ur_brain »

caspper69 wrote: post #61
ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What're you talking about? I can instantly detect if software was created with AI. It has a stench much like a cheap product who's materials off gassing, and Im certainly not using it over the handmade solution. There will always be two options, like in clothes or watches.

Wow. At least I know who downvoted me. Maybe you should take a step back and realize that sofware developers themselves are not the primary purchasers of most software. The average joe or jane purchaser doesn't have some magical AI slop detector, especially if the UI is well done.

I didnt downvote you, I cant. But I have yet to see a vibe coded project have good UI/UX. You'd be surprised how much thought and intention goes into making a great UI. An LLM simply cant, guided or unguided.

I actually predict that frontend devs and designers will become more valuable in the coming years as people (stupidly) abandon these disciplines.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#83

Post by james_marks »

singingtoday wrote: post #22

They're going to be overworked. In the old days we programmed systems by literally wiring them. There wasn't much work, only a few "programmers" were employed. Then somebody came up with Punch cards that was much more vision than wiring the systems directly. This opened the door for a lot more people to use them and now programmers were busier. The punch cards didn't scale either so eventually we created panels with…

Jevon’s paradox. We’ve been constrained by how much software could be produced for decades.

Making it easier/faster doesn’t increase leisure, it increases the demand for (cheaper) software.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#84

Post by drzaiusx11 »

scorpioxy wrote: post #15
ryandvm wrote: post #7

I've definitely noticed a distinct lack of pride now that Claude Code is writing 90% of the code I'm delivering these days. For simple problems (which most are) it works well enough and you are definitely shipping code faster - and with actual test coverage to boot. But it just doesn't feel the same - there's little craftsmanship and honestly it's boring as fuck. You spend a lot of time setting up guardrails and havi…

I wonder that too. I've been on the receiving end of "it's 90% done, we just need someone to get it over the line for us" way too many times to know that there's going to be a lot of pain trying to maintain or re-write parts of anything that is vibe-coded. On the other hand, I notice the AI-fundamentalists(I am not sure how to refer to people within that group) just say that you won't be doing any hand coding anymore…

I've been pulled into these 90% done vibe-coded projects several times now to "get them over the line" and all I have to say is I wouldn't wish it on my greatest enemy.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#85

Post by drzaiusx11 »

Any sufficiently large (preexisting) codebase has subtlties and "load bearing" bugs that allow it to function.

In my personal experience, the vibe coded solutions are incapable of delivering "safe" changes outside of anything trivial without breaking something. Folks now just seem to think this is OK? The result is software like my password manager and banking apps no longer reliably work. The trade offs (currently) just aren't worth it imho.

Maybe once we get context windows in the 100M range these systems will handle large scale (and distributed in my case) backend systems just fine. They most certainly are not at the moment, at least not to preexisting backend software systems of modest complexity. Not even close.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#86

Post by CM30 »

I'd say it very much depends on software focused the company/industry in question is.

On the lower end, there are a lot of companies whose sole purpose is to build websites for other small/medium sized businesses that don't care enough about tech to pay for a full-time engineering team.

For those companies and developers, I suspect the increasing rise of AI will be a bloodbath. If your whole value proposition is "we can build your website using WordPress/Squarespace/Shopify/[CMS name here]", then AI can basically do about 95% of your job. I suspect a lot of these companies are going to shutter when clients take the work in-house due to AI, and many others will probably lose about 90% of their employees due to AI solutions being generally 'good enough'.

On the other hand, if your company is tech focused and needs to implement more complex functionality as a selling point, then there'll still be a place for software engineers even with AI. This is where the engineer as pseudo project manager thing comes into play, and where the actual coding side of things is probably going to be limited to things the AI can't implement properly.

Both situations will probably see a significant drop in the number of software engineers employed there, but the latter feels like it'll still have some room for a career.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#87

Post by pitched »

scorpioxy wrote: post #52
yakkomajuri wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. So I've also been running a survey about how developers are feeling about AI (added a link to the post) and 60% of respondents said that using AI actively makes them more tired. Most also report being more productive with AI. One would think these two things combined make up for initiatives for shorter work weeks and the like, but from what I've seen, at least for now, the opposite seems to be happening. P.S…

Shorter work weeks don't mean less work though. Not from the point of view of management, at least. It just means that 5 days are now compressed to 4, probably making the problem much worse and burn out much more likely. In my experience, this is what ended up happening.

When you work for someone, you’re selling hours of time. Reducing days means you’re selling fewer hours. That has always been possible but they’ll probably want to pay less.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#88

Post by pitched »

thr33 wrote: post #19
caspper69 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference, and I think we as an industry will have to reconcile this depending on how advanced llms get, is that you don’t see the quality in handmade code like you do in a high end watch or a luxury automobile or appliance. The veneer might be identical. It’s going to be tough to convince people that handmade software has added value or quality over slop. I still believe it does right now, but that might not al…

well this is not exactly unique to software. It is not a given that the 'handmade' nature of a product (luxury or otherwise) manifests in anything tangible or self-evidently superior. Luxury products in general overwhelmingly treat the crafted nature of the product as almost solely an investment in narrative (read: marketing) and market positioning, not an actual material outcome.

I like this take a lot. Posting a counter-example not because I disagree but because I think it’s interesting.

Ghostty is a terminal emulator with a pretty good narrative. The author is very accessible on podcasts to go over the story. It is also actually very good though. I think the jump in performance and usability put it on the map before the narrative could help push it further. The product does have to actually be good before the crafted nature can be invested into.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#89

Post by spwa4 »

I think AI will make software developers and system administrators a necessity for many more companies, because they'll have AI carry out other jobs.

Given the quantity of such companies that exist, I'd expect a lot more jobs for software devs. Somewhat different, sure, but not fundamentally different.

Re: What's gonna happen to software engineers?

#90

Post by stvltvs »

sam0x17 wrote: post #31
prplfsh wrote: post #3

I really love using AI to code but more and more I wonder ... Are things really that different? So I guess I'm the business as usual type. I think on the frontend side we're going to see a lot more scope for teams. On a backend infra side it seems as hard as ever. Still have to think really hard problems, think deeply about data structure and flow, and deal with second- and third-order effects. Or even harder because…

What I like is it's still hard, but you can do things like "prove this using game theory" or "find the optimal value for this and a proof" without having to know game theory or deep math really

How do you ensure that the output isn't BS if you don't know those areas? What value does it add to have a mathematical proof of questionable validity?
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